AA-1: Camp Directors

CAMP ADMINISTRATION TO INCLUDE DISABILITIES AND SPECIAL NEEDS SCOUTS AND ADULTS

IN THIS MODULE:

OVERVIEW

This module is for Camp Directors, Short Term Camp Administrators, and Day Camp Directors at BSA Camps.  It is intended to supplement your National Camp School training.  It applies to all ages of Scouting but the emphasis is on multi-night camps, with a few specifics for day camp situations.  The goal is to provide a concise guide that explains the key features needed to make a camp friendly to campers with diverse abilities, including special needs and disabilities.  This module focuses on things that are within the control of the leadership that is running sessions of camp.  While we mention some kinds of temporary accessibility modifications, permanent facility improvements are outside the scope of this module.

We want every Scout to have the opportunity for a camp experience. You will have some Scouts at camp whose disabilities are obvious, like physical disabilities[1], blind, deaf, or Down syndrome.  For every obvious disability you see, there will be several Scouts with less obvious special needs like learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, history of seizures, or anxiety disorders.  Camp is exciting and challenging and over the course of a multi-day camp session, Scouts with disabilities may tire out or act out more as time goes on.  So some Scouts with milder special needs may start the camp session without needing accommodations but then begin to need them later on.

You are not all on your own.  Every Council has adults that have special knowledge and skills in special needs and disabilities that you can draw upon.  In some Councils, there is a distinct committee to serve special needs and disabilities[2].  In others, these specialists are inside a Council Advancement or Camping Committee.  In others, there is that “go to” person that the Council professionals call on when an issue crops up[3].  There is always someone.  You might just have to dig a little to figure out who that person is.  As you are preparing to lead a camp, it is a good idea to get to know these people and learn from them what you need to emphasize in your preparations. A formal meeting during the early planning can save you effort later on.

PROMOTING YOUR CAMP AS FRIENDLY TO DIVERSE ABILITIES

Assuming you and your camp staff are going to put in the effort to make your camp friendly to Scouts with disabilities, you want people to take advantage of the opportunity.  In all your efforts it is easy to overlook the fact that the families of Scouts with special needs are likely to assume that they can’t or won’t be accommodated until someone tells them differently.  To steal from the movie Dr. Strangelove, “Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday machine camp prepared for special needs is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world?”

So an element of being prepared for special needs includes the marketing you use to promote your camp sessions in general.  That means your web marketing, promotional flyers, camp leader’s manuals, as well as word of mouth.

CAMP PREVIEWS

Even when camp administrators, Rangers, and property managers carefully inspect places for obstructions to access, things get missed.  A real life example was the dining hall at (name withheld) where there was a door latch on the only accessible path into the building that was sticky and would not open without fiddling it in a certain way.  When you live with a mobility limitation or other disability you know better than anyone else what to watch out for to take care of yourself.  It’s not just mobility and access that could matter.  It could be sensory issues with light and sound, or a need you never imagined until it cropped up.

The best way to prevent these embarrassing events is to create a time for families of Scouts with special needs to come out to the camp location and walk through the locations where the Scout will need to go and then team with the camp staff to come up with work arounds.  Doing this before camp starts gives the families a chance to be your partner in coming up with a solution.  It could be that a simple piece of equipment can be brought from home and solve the problem if you just knew you needed it.

Preview tours work best when the family can be met by someone who is actually on the leadership staff for the camp session.  You can also have one of the specialists from your Council’s special needs committee come out for the tour as a “translator”.  The scope of the tour will be almost the same as the tour the camp host gives a unit when it arrives at camp. To be efficient with your time, you want to have a scheduled tour opportunity and promote it with your camp information rather than making appointments one at a time.  Some opportunities are: (1) a staff workday in the spring ahead of the camp session, (2) a weekend when a leadership staffer will already be at the camp for another event, or (3) During the camp set-up week immediately prior to opening camp.

If these don’t work, you may have to be more resourceful.  If the Scout lives close enough, maybe the family can come out and meet with the Camp Ranger during the week, with the Ranger reporting the needs back to the camp director.  If the Scout is coming in from a long distance, the only realistic option may be to ask the Scout/family to arrive at the camp a day early, and give the tour right after last week’s campers leave for home.

DE-STRESSING AREA aka TRANQUILITY BASE

If you stop to think about it, camp changes everything for a camper.  You have to learn a new campus, be with new people, eat new food, be on new schedules, answer to new leaders, and on and on.  Even people that don’t struggle enough in ordinary life to be diagnosed with a special need can get overloaded at camp.  This happens to the youth and the adults.

There are several different special needs that put some people at a higher level of stress in everyday life than other people.  So when they get to a camp environment, the stress increases to where they aren’t able to maintain a good disposition. Without any extra effort, the adults have built in coping schemes for stress that youth do not.  The unit campsite is quiet during the day and offers a place to unwind.  Most camps also have some version of a “Scoutmaster’s Lounge” as a no-kid zone.

It is worth your while to organize a de-stressing respite area for overstimulated Scouts because it will free up health staff time and resources to handle other needs at camp.  The BSA Special Needs and Disabilities committee uses the term Tranquility Base to describe a dedicated spot for Scouts to go while they decompress.

What goes into Tranquility Base? – The idea behind the Tranquility Base is to create a quiet place where Scouts can use their own coping skills.  It needs shade and some quiet things to do while the Scout is there.  It could also serve as a cooling or water station for the camp. It could be an indoor space, pavilion, or under an outdoor canopy. Perhaps a corner of the dining hall can be a Tranquility Base between meals.  In general, you are trying to reduce sensory input from bright light, noise, and smells. Having some ear plugs on hand provides an option for Scouts who need it even quieter.  Understand that the objects that give a Scout comfort may be more “childish” than you might expect for that age and that is OK. Play dough, coloring books, Legos, stress balls, or spinners are good to have on hand.  Jigsaw puzzles or two person board games are good as well.  In many ways, Tranquility Base is the youth counterpart to the Scoutmaster’s Lounge.

Where should Tranquility Base be? – For your camp, you want to have a Tranquility Base area in the central part of the camp where most of the daytime activity occurs. The unit is responsible for the Scout the rest of the time and it is a good idea for each unit to have their own Tranquility Base in their campsite.  The unit’s base can be tailored to their Scout’s needs. You can include this recommendation in your camp orientation documents.

An unstructured quiet play space will appeal to a lot of Scouts, but a Scout that needs a respite break won’t need a long time to regroup and then rejoin the rest of the camp program activities.  Realistically, there needs to be a mature adult to supervise the Tranquility Base.  Scouts that are lingering after calming down need to be encouraged to move on and if the area becomes noisy an authority figure may need to shush people or ask them to take an activity somewhere else, just like a librarian would at a library.  If Tranquility Base is open to view by passersby, you will only need one adult to supervise and if it is indoors it will need two adults to meet youth protection standards.

How do you staff Tranquility Base? – Aside from the benefit to the Scouts, the main benefit of a Tranquility Base is keeping the Health Lodge from being overrun by Scouts that need a respite, when the health staff needs to care for injuries and medical conditions. So the Health staff should not be asked to staff Tranquility Base.

While you could ask the units that come to camp to have their adults sign-up for shifts at Tranquility Base to cover the day, we don’t recommend that.  All it takes is for one person to forget and miss their shift to shut down Tranquility Base.  You want people mature enough where the Scouts will take direction from a stranger, but your Tranquility Base staff does not need professional qualifications.  They need to know that they are not there to counsel or fix a problem for a Scout, but just to keep the noise level down and encourage lingering Scouts to go on to other activities.  They are not responsible to make sure anyone gets to their next class on time.

This is an area where a week-at-a-time volunteer could be your staffer.  You could let the volunteer come to camp and spend evenings in the campsite with their home unit while running Tranquility Base during the day.  If you waived their individual camp fee for the week, you could get a taker for this role.

BORROWING ADAPTIVE EQUIPMENT

The BB series of modules for the Inclusion Toolbox includes specialized lists of simple and affordable materials and devices to make it easier to serve Scouts with disabilities.  There may be other equipment that would be nice to have but is more expensive.  There are a great many non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies that serve this population and have equipment that you could borrow for a few weeks of camp.  Module G of the Toolbox has an extensive list of national organizations for you to look at.  Most of the national organizations have local chapters that you can reach out to for help.

BARRIER-FREE (ACCESSIBLE) CAMPSITES

The Properties Group in BSA Outdoor Programs has a design guide for a barrier-free campsite[4].  Your camp may or may not have one already , or it may have a campsite that is not barrier-free but it is better than most. The basic features are (1) roll-in access to tents, (2) enough standing height in a tent to push a wheelchair into it, (3) roll-in access to latrines and showers, and (4) roll-up access to tables.

Require units to let you know in advance if they need a barrier-free site for a Scout. You also need to partner with them and communicate back to them what your plans are for accommodating them.  Ideally your accessible campsite is large enough to house an entire unit, so the Scout with a disability isn’t separated from friends while at camp.  Things are easy when only one unit in each camp session needs a barrier-free site.  Things get complicated when you have Scouts from more than one unit that need a barrier-free site. Then you will need to share the barrier-free campsite between units, so try to have the Scout’s whole patrol or den in the campsite if you can’t put the entire unit there.  The unit may need to have extra adults with them to cover both their regular campsite and the barrier-free campsite if you have to split them up.  If it isn’t obvious already, if you have to spread a unit over two campsites, put the rest of the unit in the closest available conventional campsite to the barrier-free campsite.  The least ideal arrangement is to put the Scout with a need in a barrier-free site with just their parent/caregiver and no other Scouts or adults from their unit. 

PREFERENTIAL CAMPSITE NEEDS

Some camps give units the option of reserving a specific campsite for their camp session.  The reasons for preferences vary, so to be special-needs friendly, your camp needs to have a way to make requests and to make sure that requests “for good cause” get a priority over requests for the unit’s convenience, tradition, or just a nice view.  There are a lot of different needs besides mobility and access accommodation.  We can’t give you a complete list of good reasons a unit could have for wanting a particular campsite to help their Scout or adult with a special need, but here is a list to get you thinking:

  • A Scout is blind so the unit requests the same campsite as before so the Scout is already oriented and familiar with its layout.
  • A Scout uses catheters and needs a well-lit restroom with a sanitizable work surface rather than a pit latrine.
  • A Scout needs medicines in the middle of the nigh and has to go to the health lodge to receive them, and needs a campsite closer to the health lodge.
  • A Scout (or adult for that matter) brings medical equipment or communication devices to camp that require electric power to operate or to recharge overnight.
  • The Scout has a medication that needs better temperature control than an ice-chest provides and has a powered cooler/warmer to be plugged in.

NIGHT-TIME MEDICAL MONITORING

For the safety of the Scout, for some medical conditions a parent or caregiver needs to sleep in the same tent as their child to provide night-time monitoring.  The most common reasons are Type 1 diabetes, where the Scout isn’t mature enough to check sugar and adjust insulin dosage on a schedule, and epileptic conditions where seizures can happen at any time and someone needs to be on hand to prevent injuries while the seizure passes.

It isn’t the camp’s responsibility to provide the caregivers to manage these conditions.  However, the Camp Director needs to be informed in advance when an adult has to stay in the same tent for night-time monitoring so the local Scout Executive can make sure that the necessary permission paperwork gets completed and approved before the camp session.  The Scout’s home council should already have given approval to this tenting plan.  Furthermore, the laws and regulations for youth protection and training at the camp’s local jurisdiction need to be met.  This needs to be coordinated well in advance of the camp session to have time to obtain the proper paperwork.

IN-CAMP TRANSPORTATION

It isn’t realistic to expect a camp to have permanent wheelchair-accessible pathways between anywhere and everywhere at camp, but despite this we need to make a way for Scouts to get where they want to go while at camp. This isn’t just for Scouts that arrive with mobility disabilities; it also includes people that have an injury or have a physical setback during the camp session. An often overlooked situation is people with conditions like hip dysplasia and past strokes, which don’t keep them from walking completely but limit how far they can walk at one time and in a day.

In-camp vehicle transportation is the best response to this need, but to provide a safe environment for all the people at camp, the transportation system needs to be thought out well before the camp session begins.  We cannot give you any hard and fast rules for how to provide transportation because each camp has different terrain and size.  So instead, we are giving you things to think about when you make your own plan. We also suggest you look through the Safety Moments for transportation as you make a plan for your camp.

The Social Context – Scouts with disabilities who come to camp should have a regular camp experience and not have it diminished by being isolated from their friends, old or new.  We want to take advantage of the natural helpfulness of other Scouts to make the shorter moves around camp.  When we have to use a vehicle we want to allow at least one buddy Scout to ride along with the Scout that needs transportation, so they can socialize.  This also makes sure they have a buddy with them when they are dropped off at the destination.

Your Camp Schedule –Scouts with mobility disabilities should be expected to make some effort to meet their own needs, but time is a consideration.  If it takes an unimpeded Scout 15 minutes to walk each way to the Horse Corral and the time between sessions is 15 minutes, you can’t expect someone with a disability to move that fast.  For that matter, the physical effort to move in a chair or on crutches could be much greater than regular walking and you just can’t ask the Scout to cover that much mileage in a day.

Your Camp Layout – Every campsite and every program venue already has a way to get to it with an over-the-road vehicle to haul equipment in.  That becomes your fallback path for vehicle access.  The distances between the core of the camp and the outlying program venues need to be taken into account. Also think about the vertical terrain of the camp and how rough your roads are when making plans. Are your vehicle roads also used as walking paths by the Scouts?

What Kinds of Vehicles – You have a lot of options for vehicles.  These include golf carts, electric or gas-powered industrial carts, utility terrain vehicles (UTV), cars, SUVs, vans, or pick-ups.  Most if not all of these are available for rent at reasonable prices for a camp session.  The cost of a temporary vehicle for special needs transportation is also an easy fundraising ask if the cost cannot be absorbed in the camp budget.

In general, a vehicle that is lower to the ground is safer because it makes it easier to see when a pedestrian Scout steps out from a side trail onto the vehicle path.  A slower vehicle will generally be safer as well.  By the time you meet the needs for youth protection and buddy system, you will generally need a vehicle with four seats and a place to hold a wheelchair. Remember BSA requires additional training to drive UTVs.

Restraints – Be aware that a Scout that needs to be transported may need more than a lap belt or shoulder belt to be safe in the vehicle while moving over terrain.  Muscle weakness in the upper body could require something to more firmly support the torso or head.  You want to know in advance if these additional needs are present.  However, this problem already has a solution because the Scout needed the same kind of restraints to arrive at camp in the first place.  So in most instances you have the option of moving the restraint system over to another vehicle for the camp session or allowing the pre-equipped vehicle to be used at camp to move the Scout.  Another thing to think about is whether or not a helmet would improve safety for the Scout.  Bicycle and climbing helmets may already be part of your camp’s stock of equipment.  With rough camp roads, the regular restraint system the Scout uses may need some enhancement or reinforcement.

How Many Scouts Do You Need to Serve – You will need to communicate with the unit leaders in advance of camp to know how many Scouts need transportation and what their specific needs are.  For one or two Scouts, it usually makes sense to have the unit provide the vehicles and drivers to move the Scout around.  Any special driver training for your camp will need to be provided each session.  If you have a large number of Scouts that need transportation, then an organized system with vehicles driven by camp staff makes more sense.  With a larger number, you will have to decide whether you want to have an on-demand system where riders call for a ride or regular scheduled routes like a city bus system.

CAMP FOOD SERVICE

Few special needs create as many complaints at camp as needs for special diets. In time, the Inclusion Toolbox will have a specific module for Camp Food Managers, but until then we refer you to Module H of the Toolbox, which describes food allergies and issues you will likely run into.  The key thing to understand is that special food needs are fairly common and the camp needs to know what needs are before the units arrive at camp.  You could need to provide any or all of these possibilities at one time: vegetarian, low carbohydrate (diabetic), gluten-free, or allergen-free.  In addition to controlling ingredients, cooking processes need to be adapted to eliminate cross-contamination. Do not expect people with special diets to eat the same thing at every meal or always eat off the salad bar. Don’t forget that some people have restricted diets for religious reasons.

You can leverage pre-camp communication to your advantage as well.  People with food sensitivities care a lot about getting things right and they are motivated to work with the camp to come up with a good solution.  By talking to the food service manager in advance, they can work out a practical menu plan that avoids ordering special foods.  If eating from the dining hall is more work than it is worth, they may volunteer to bring food from home or be willing to cook for themselves in their campsite.  That is not an ideal situation because it separates the Scout from the group, but it may be the only way for that Scout to come to camp.

TRAINING CAMP STAFF

Training your program staff how to adapt their programs and equipment to suit Scouts with special needs and disabilities is a challenge due to the amount of other training they require and the amount of time available for training.  To make the process more efficient, a series of Inclusion Toolbox modules is being developed to provide focused and specific guidance for each major program activity area.  These are identified as the BB Series of modules. At the time of this writing (Dec 2022), modules have been completed for swimming pool, waterfront/boating, gun shooting, archery/throwing sports, handicrafts, and STEM handwork.  As quickly as they can be developed, modules are planned for climbing/COPE, fishing, and general merit badge teaching.   We recommend using the available specific modules as the training curriculum for each area and to have that training guided by the leader for that area.  Until the BB Series is completed, all other staff can be trained using Module F – Methods that Apply to Many Disabilities. One hour should be enough for this basic training.

There are several training modules already available to you at https://www.scouting.org/ resources/ disabilities-awareness/.  Don’t forget to take advantage of your Council’s special needs and disabilities specialist to come to camp and facilitate the training.  Training always works better when the trainer “has the T-shirt” for the topic at hand.  If you don’t have someone already in your council, remember that all of the non-profit organizations listed in Module G have local chapters and volunteers that would be willing to help train your staff.

The BB Series modules also include suggested supplemental equipment lists for each activity to enable the program.  These are relatively low-cost items that make it easier for the staff to create accommodations on the fly.

LEADER ORIENTATION ON ARRIVAL AND OPEN HOUSE

These two events are in the same section to explain the differences between them and why both are important. What we are calling the leader orientation is the general meeting you have with the leaders of the units that came to camp for that session.  You will have a number of topics to review with them that aren’t related to special needs, and you will already have worked out most of the detailed accommodations with them on a unit-by-unit basis.  That leaves two topics from this discussion to be sure to include in the general meeting.  The first is to explain what Tranquility Base is, and how you are implementing it at your camp (location, hours of operation, staffing, and rules for its use).  The second topic is to explain to the group how your in-camp transportation system will work.  The people who don’t need transportation will not necessarily understand why some Scouts and units are being treated differently from others, and resent them.  Those leaders need information to communicate to their own Scouts and other adults to enhance safety and build empathy for the disabled.

Open house serves a different purpose.  It works like “meet the teacher night” at school.  The leader of each program area has a table to meet at, and any adult or Scout that wants to talk through a specific special need situation can get with the area leader and make a plan for accommodations.  For example, if a Scout with an intellectual disability has been looking forward to fishing, the caregiver can talk to the person running the fishing venue about what that Scout will and will not specifically need.  Or as another example, if a Scout that is hard of hearing wants to earn a Climbing badge, the Scout or helping adult can get with the climbing leader to talk about how they will adapt the usual verbal commands for climbing.

The open house is valuable because it will keep your staff from being blindsided and give them at least a moment to reflect and make a plan before being confronted by a special need during the activity. It needs to happen before the first full program day, and you will likely find it easiest to do after the evening meal on arrival day. For the campers, talking through things for a few minutes builds a partnership with the staff so that they understand that the staff is going to help them and they understand how the campers can do their part to resolve difficulties. It helps set realistic expectations on everyone’s part.

PRE-CAMP COMMUNICATION

Communication is the first step in being prepared for special needs and disabilities.  Camps use a variety of channels these days to get Scouts and adults ready to come to camp: printed guide documents, pre-camp meetings, video-conference calls, and more.  There are lot of topics to cover aside from special needs, so no doubt you already have ways of getting information out to the units that plan to come to camp.  In this module we will only focus on the topics we’ve already discussed and also need to be communicated in advance. Admittedly the next two parts are mostly mirror images.

What Units Need to Know from You – If you are implementing these features to make your camp friendly to special needs and disabilities, the adults and families of the Scouts need to know:

  • How to request a preview/advance tour of the camp to identify obstacles
  • That you have a Tranquility Base and that they may need one in their unit campsite too
  • You have a barrier-free campsite and how to request space in it
  • Your policy for special campsite requests and how they can justify them
  • Local laws/rules/council policy for family members & caregivers to have one-on-one contact with a youth or to sleep in the same tent for night-time medical monitoring
  • If units need to provide vehicles and drivers for in-camp transportation or that the camp is providing them
  • To communicate special needs to you and your staff early so you can coordinate things in advance

What You Need to Know from Units in Advance of Camp – This list is not just a list for a questionnaire.

When you get responses on any these topics, there will need to be follow-up communication for each situation.  One reason for follow-up communication is that a person that makes a request often has one particular solution in mind and expects that to happen.  They don’t realize that their problem has already been solved in some other way or that there may be a simpler way to get their need met if the entire context is considered.

The other reason is efficiency.  When you guess about the details of a person’s disability without talking to them, you can waste effort on things that aren’t actually needed and miss doing the things that really matter.  Consider this example:  One wheelchair user had a spinal cord injury, but has excellent upper body strength and participates in wheelchair racing as a sport.  Another wheelchair user has muscular dystrophy and has low strength and endurance all over.  On paper they might look alike because both use wheelchairs, but one may need little in additional support and the other quite a lot.

  • Any restriction, medical or not, that they think will keep a camper from being able to camp (it might not)
  • Food Allergies/Food Preparation Restrictions
  • Night-time monitoring/alternate sleeping arrangements/assistance with bathing or dressing
  • Preferential campsite needs
  • Barrier-free campsite needs
  • In-camp transportation requirements
  • Known mobility and accessibility trouble spots
  • Last Updated 12/28/2022
  • Authors – Brent Worley and Warren Wenner
  • Editor – Roger B. Tate
  • Reviewed by – Andrea Watson

[1] Physical disabilities include people who need mobility equipment like wheelchairs and crutches, but also include people that have limited strength, endurance, or coordination.

[2] Each council picks its own name for such a committee, so we can’t tell you exactly what yours is called.

[3] The national Special Needs and Disabilities Committee has taken to calling these people “Council Champions”.

[4] https://www.scouting.org/outdoor-programs/properties/resources/design-guidelines/  The barrier-free illustration is Guide 106.